


Burn it Down (Love Never Lasts)

by Infinatesky



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Assassin - Freeform, Assassin Jaskier | Dandelion, Based on a dream I had, Childhood Friends, Feral Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt is lonely, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt No Comfort, Injury, Jaskier is lonely, M/M, Major Character Injury, Poisoning, Sad, Sad Ending, Sad Jaskier | Dandelion, Vivid coronavirus dream am I right?, Written to sad music, i almost cried, kind of ambiguous ending, they could both use a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:14:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23861380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infinatesky/pseuds/Infinatesky
Summary: Human/assassin AU. Jaskier accidentally poisons Geralt and is understandably torn up about it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 10
Kudos: 73





	Burn it Down (Love Never Lasts)

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags and the warnings; this isn't a particularly happy one (but I really do hope you enjoy it nonetheless).

When the witcher pushes him back, Jaskier is sure to keep one hand free, and the whole thing is so much easier now that he’s learned to leave the vial easily accessible. His pointer and middle fingers graze the powdery contents of the vial, then sneak their way inside of the witcher’s mouth, and the deed is as good as done. Just a quick dip in past his chapped lips, making sure to swipe over his tongue; the witcher doesn’t even seem to notice. Like every time before, Jaskier’s gloved fingers come back moist and uncomfortably warm, still flecked with the lethal powder. The witcher has Jaskier pinned back against the wall, and seems to believe that he’s winning; his white hair is slick from sweat, and strands of it stick to his face, moving in and out with his breathing. He’d been ready when Jaskier caught up to him, sword already drawn. And Jaskier is smaller, not as quick with a weapon, but Jaskier’s already killed him. The poor brute just doesn’t know it yet.

Jaskier’s hand, the one with the fingers dipped in cyanide powder, flutters in the air between them until Jaskier returns it to the witcher’s face, cupping his pronounced jaw. Better as far away from Jaskier as possible, those fingers, at least until he can get rid of the glove. Jaskier’s other hand is uncomfortably caught behind him, palm splayed on the chipping paint, back of his hand digging into the coils of his harness—the one with all the hidden pockets filled with knives and vials of powders, each more deadly than the last. He shuffles his fingers against the wall, but can’t pull his hand out. Each time he tries, the wall scratches at the soft skin of his wrist and catches at the scars there—Jaskier has scars nearly everywhere on his body. The witcher shifts his forearm so that it’s higher across Jaskier’s shoulders, approaching his neck and what would no doubt be an unfortunately unpleasant choke hold.

“I was expecting they’d send someone with a bit more… muscle, to kill me. ” The words are gruff, a rumble from deep in the witcher’s throat. He exhales, hot breath reaching Jaskier’s face, and draws his eyebrows down in what looks like a dare. “Fight back.”

“I will, sweet beast. Be patient.” Jaskier swipes his thumb once more over the witcher’s jaw, tracing his cheek bone and onto the pink skin of his bottom lip. Both of the witcher’s hands are currently occupied—the one that isn’t holding Jaskier to the wall is wrapped around the hilt of a sword, which Jaskier knows only because the tip of said sword pushes ever so slightly against his rib cage. With nothing to stop him, and the necessary thing already over and done with, Jaskier’s hand is free to do whatever it likes. And oh, does he like the feeling of the witcher’s face in his hand. Of all the lives Jaskier had taken, he’s enjoyed killing people like this the most—the ones who aren't scared to die, who fight back. It makes Jaskier’s job feel more noble, somehow. All the beautiful creatures who’d taken their last breaths—the murderers, corrupt leaders, cheaters—it doesn’t matter why he’s been sent after them, not really. What he cares about is how they face their death. The witcher is fighting with the gusto of someone who believes themselves to be immune to dying; maybe at one point he had been.

“I’ve heard many stories about you, witcher. Butcher.” This remark causes the witcher’s arm to inch up closer to Jaskier’s neck, and a growl to ripple anew through his lips. “Oh, don’t like that one?” Jaskier pushes himself up onto his tip toes, and arches his chest up, all to give his neck a bit more space. He’s heard about the witcher, because in his circle it was practically impossible not to. Stories and rumours of the rebel assassin, the secretive madman who goes only by ‘the witcher’, these things hit the ground running and don’t stop until everyone has heard them. The witcher’s become somewhat of a legend—rarely seen, constantly dropping off the grid—it’s hard at times to remember that he’s a real person, and not just an old wives tale. He’s idolized like a god, or, as is more probably the case, the epitome of a monster that you should be afraid of.

“ _One day, he’s going to kill us all._ ” That was the general consensus, which had been vocalized to Jaskier by Yen, his co-worker, if you could call it that. At any rate, she killed just as many people as he did, and that had created an odd, not entirely friendly bond between them. She’d gone after the witcher once, but hadn’t managed to catch him. “ _He’s like a spector. A demon raised straight from hell,_ ” she’d said, not at all unconvincingly. “ _I saw him kill a whole family with not even so much as a moment’s hesitation. He’ll cut the head off of anything that breathes, or for that matter, anything that still has a head_.” Yen said this with an air of amazement. Jaskier wasn’t surprised—when you made a life of killing people, there wasn’t much that could irk you. Any sort of morals that you may have once held were gone, or buried too deep inside you to make a difference anymore.

Jaskier waits, counts to thirty, draws his eyes along the decrepit, tiny room they’ve barrelled into. He tries once more to pull his hand out from behind his back, subtly testing the witcher’s strength. At this point, enough time has passed since he’s been poisoned with Jaskier’s cyanide. Any minute now, the arm against Jaskier’s chest will loosen, and the witcher will stumble backwards, kneel or fall over, and without so much as a last word, be dead. Once you’ve seen it for the first time, you’ve seen it enough to understand. The science behind it—how the sodium cyanide would mix with saliva to activate, and from the mouth begin to affect the brain, the heart, the lungs—these are unimportant technicalities that he memorized once a long time ago. The process will happen on its own, regardless of who knows and who doesn’t. This is what makes poisoning different from killing with a sword, or a gun: you can take yourself mostly out of the equation. If you’re clever and good at what you do (as Jaskier is), you can leave before the death has even occurred and no one will ever be able to connect the two together.

“Why-” starts the witcher, but the end of the word is snatched from him, finishing instead in a breathy exhalation. He groans, and Jaskier can feel his jaw clench underneath his fingers. The witcher is hiding it well, but he'll be feeling dizzy and weak by this point. He shouldn’t still be able to stand, but somehow he is. The witcher swallows dryly, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down, then tries to speak once more. “Why won’t you… fight back.”

“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Jaskier returns. The witcher’s sword is right there—it could have been used to slit his throat minutes ago. Perhaps, Jaskier lets himself muse, there are two very similar looking men who both responded to ‘Witcher’. Unlikely, of course, but could this really be the right person? The ruthless killer who takes out entire families—-entire villages—and doesn’t look back. Jaskier has never seen the witcher before, and so can’t be entirely sure that he’s tracked down the right person. If somehow he has managed to slip cyanide inside the wrong pair of lips, it would be the first time in a very long career to make that mistake. Unfortunate slip up, killing the wrong bloke.

“Are you not the famed witcher, killer of all who breathe?” Jaskier asks.

“I don’t-” The large man stumbles back, his hold on Jaskier releasing.

“Ah, there we are,” says Jaskier. He slips away from the wall, shaking life back into his hand. The glove he removes carefully, bunching it up so that the fingers are covered before depositing it into a pocket. All the while, he listens for the clatter of the witcher’s sword to the ground when his muscles grow too weak to hold it, or the thud of his body when he falls, but he hears nothing. He looks back up to find the witcher leaning against the far wall, somehow having stumbled himself all the way across the room.

Even if it wasn’t for the cyanide currently coursing through his body, backing up from wall to wall of the room would have been a braggable feat. The floor is broken and uneven, littered with rubble and shattered glass bottles. Yaletown and Wrastherth had once been connected by a lone rail road. The train, loud and tiresome from its great weight rushing along the tracks, didn’t last more than half a century before it broke down and was replaced (highways coming after it, wide enough for three lanes each direction). Nonetheless, the train had moved many, many people between the two towns, and directly in the middle, surrounded by trees and not much else, the train had repeatedly stopped for a break. This room, the room where the witcher will die, had at one point been the engineer's resting area. Perhaps, after, it had also been a home to vandals, or a well-loved destination for fights and reckless parties. The windows, once large enough to give a million-dollar view of the forest, are smashed in and blocked with red paper. It’s against the window, forehead pressed to a remaining square of glass, where the witcher has stopped.

His face has a red glow from the light through the papers, and Jaskier can’t decide if that makes him look more or less like he’s on the way to death. It doesn’t matter, really, because the rest of his posture is certainly not offering any illusions: his shoulders are slumped and his head is hung low. He’s breathing heavily, and one hand—the one that isn’t still stubbornly holding onto his sword—is pressed to his stomach as if he’s trying not to be sick. Despite all this, just the fact that he’s managed to keep himself upright is no short of a miracle. Most men would be dead by now.

Jaskier tilts his head to the side, stretching his neck out. Once he hears it pop, he steps nimbly to the far wall, strides uneven as he navigates over the broken tiles and rubble. Jaskier joins the witcher against the wall, leaning his shoulder into the window pane so that he has a good view of his face.

“I wasn’t going to tell you this, because it is rather better as a secret, but I slipped you some poison earlier. Figured you’ve realized something’s up by now.” Jaskier says this with the monotone voice of someone reading out a boorishly average weather report. He scratches idly at his shoulder before continuing. “What I don’t understand, though, is how come you’re not dead yet. Did it give you some sort of additional longevity, killing all those people?”

With a surprising amount of strength, the witcher strikes his hand against Jaskier’s chest, takes a handful of his shirt, and pulls him a few inches closer. “I don’t kill people,” he says through bared teeth.

“Well no of course not,” Jaskier looks down at the witcher’s hand and frowns, but makes no move to pull away or push him off. “I don’t ‘kill people’ either, I suppose. ‘Murder’, is that what you prefer? Or do you like to say that you ‘take people out’?” He twirls his hand in the air to accentuate each new synonym. “‘Get rid of them’? ‘End them’?”

The witcher narrows his eyes, looks away. “None of those. The stories you hear aren’t true.”

“Oh really now,” Jaskier says, amused. “Lying? From you, witcher? Tsk tsk I expected better. Ah well, won’t save you anyways.” Now Jaskier bats away the witcher’s hand, and pushes himself bouncily from the wall. “Any money on you? Or valuables? It’s easier for both of us if you tell me now. Dead bodies are such a drag to search through.” Jaskier grimaces, sticking his tongue out. The witcher is silent, which is no fun. He’s not even paying attention to Jaskier—he’s drawn his sword up close to his neck, and looks almost like he’s preparing to-

“Hey, hey, no!” Jaskier dives towards the witcher and pulls the sword from his grasp. “There will be no blood spilt here today. Not by your hand, anyways.” The witcher, silent and stoic, squares his shoulders to look Jaskier in the eye, holds it for a couple of shallow breaths, then falls. His knees buckle underneath him and he lands seated on the floor, slumped over himself. He’s still alive, shoulders rising and falling, but he won’t be for long. If it hasn’t yet, the cyanide will soon cause his heart rate to slow, and his lungs to fail. If you aren’t lucky enough to go unconscious first, it can be a nasty, drawn out death.

Jaskier tosses the sword to the side, sure that it will fetch him a pretty penny to pawn once this is all over. There will be a sizable reward to killing the witcher, as well, but never as much as he should really be making. No one to complain to, as an assassin, so the people get to charge him whatever they want. There aren’t enough opportunities for him to be picky about it. He was given the request to kill the witcher in the same way as most others—an anonymous phone call, a promise of payment through some untraceable source once the job was done. No questions asked from either side. When it came down to it, Jaskier had done more for less, and so far this was proving to be rather entertaining, anyways.

He brushes aside the dust and grime from a spot on the floor and joins the witcher, crossing his legs neatly under himself. “You have a few minutes left, maybe less. Anything you want to get off your chest before you go? Feel particularly bad about one or two of those murdered children, perhaps?”

“I didn’t kill any children,” the witcher says, voice muffled from how he’s got his face pressed against his knees. “I’ll bet you have though.”

Jaskier gasps, happily surprised. No one has ever asked him how he felt before. “Oh witcher, how very nice of you to care, and yes, I reckon I have killed a minor or two. Only ever when asked to, of course.”

“And how do you go on, living as a monster?”

Jaskier chuckles, “I’m not the monster here.”

“Only one man in this room has the blood of children on his hands.”

Jaskier presses the pad of his pointer finger onto the ground, and watches as it comes back up covered with a layer of dust. “I watched both of my parents die when I was very young, both killed for no reason. I’ve done what I had to do to survive, but I’d never sink to that level. I don’t kill anyone who hasn’t brought it upon themselves.”

“And me?” The witcher’s voice is more of a croak, now, than a growl.

“Oh come now, you know what you’ve done. Everyone knows your stories. I’m not going to spell it out for you. Why, do you get off on that, hearing other people talk about you?”

The witcher refuses to rise to Jaskier's bate. “So you don’t need proof?”

“For what you’ve done? Eye-witness accounts count as proof.” And many, many eye-witness accounts there are.

“Eye witnesses who weren’t biased? Or who hadn’t made up their mind on what they were seeing before it even happened? I’m not the monster you think I am.” The witcher’s lungs are straining to get all of his words out, but he still seems adamant to continue speaking regardless.

“That’s enough, witcher, really. I don’t really know what you think you’re going to get out of this. No matter how much groveling you do, your name will never be cleared—I can promise you that much.” Jaskier says, trying and failing to come up with a reason why such a renowned, reigning criminal would want to say anything against the legacy he’d be leaving. The witcher plants his hands against the ground, stabilizing. His breaths come faster, and his shoulders rise and fall hectically with each one.

“Your parents.. died, you said?” a breath. “Mine gave me up. Shipped me off. Never wanted to see me again. I was raised to kill things, but I don’t.” Another breath. “Not unless they’re about to kill me.” He reaches into the collar of his shirt, and pulls out a shining silver medallion, which he proceeds to wrap a fist around tightly, as if it could keep him alive. The sight of the medallion triggers something from deep in Jaskier’s memory, and he leans in. He tries to pry the witcher’s fingers away to get a better look.

“Hey, what-”

“Where did you get this?” Jaskier asked sharply. The witcher unsuccessfully fights to keep his fingers around the medallion, but doesn’t reply, so Jaskier continues. He pulls the thing from the witcher’s neck, and is hit by the weight of displaced childhood memories at the sight of the engraved wolf’s head. The medallion, which had looked much bigger around the neck of a boy than it did on a man, had once belonged to one of Jaskier’s schoolmates. They’d been nearly the same age, but hadn’t spoken often, as the other boy had been quiet and shy and didn’t mix well with Jaskier’s friends. “The boy who wore that medallion, did you kill him?”

The witcher summons what must be his final reserve of strength to push Jaskier off of him. “In a way, yes,” he says. “In other ways, he grew up.”

“The fuck does that mean?” Here was this monster, who’d claimed just seconds ago that he didn’t kill children, now making a riddle from that poor boy’s death. The boy may have been a loner, but he’d been kind. Jaskier had been aloof in school at the best of times, and he could still picture when the boy would help him by drawing him back to the present, tapping on his desk when he’d zoned out in class, or filling in for him when he hadn’t been paying attention to a question. Jaskier hadn’t appreciated it enough back then.

“The boy, do you remember what the boy looked like?” Asks the witcher hoarsely.

“Yes. White-blond hair, broad shoulders for a teenager, stone-faced. I knew him! I knew him when I was young. And you tried to say that you weren’t a monster—he never did anything wrong!”

The witcher laughs—a rush of air through his nose. He says, “And do you remember what his name was?”

“Uh- Jeremy? Ger- Geralt?” Jaskier looked up and locked eyes with the witcher. His are strange, so light brown that they look yellow. Jaskier’s own eyes have been the recipients of many compliments, but he thinks that the only truly beautiful eyes in this room belong to the witcher. They are incredibly unique; he’s only seen eyes like them once before, and those belonged to- “Geralt!” This time, Jaskier says the name with a new urgency. “No, no, how-?”

The witcher—Geralt—is hit by a coughing spell, and he begins to slide farther down the wall. Jaskier scrambles to get his hands underneath Geralt’s head, guiding it to the ground slowly so that he won’t hurt himself. “No, no, it’s you. It’s you. How is it you?”

“Do you believe me now, that I didn’t kill those people?” He says it with a small smile, somehow finding humour in this terrible mistake. Jaskier takes a strand of Geralt’s long hair in between his fingers, and tucks it gently behind the witcher’s ear.

“Yes, yes I believe you,” Jaskier says. To his surprise, his voice cracks as if he’s crying. He brushes his fingers below his eye, and sure enough, the fingers come back wet. “Where did you go? How- how did this happen?”

“You did this to me, Jaskier.” And that’s not what he meant when he asked the question, but dammit if that doesn’t break his heart into a million pieces.

“No, no I didn’t mean to.” He says, shaky hands pressed onto Geralt’s chest, ghosting over his arms, cupping his jaw, moving, moving. “No I didn’t mean to.” His voice drops to a desperate whisper. “I didn’t know. Geralt, I didn’t know.” Jaskier moves closer, and draws Geralt’s head into his lap. He leans over to look at him, and his tears drop warm and wet onto Geralt’s pained face. “Hold on, wait…” He pulls out vial after vial, knowing that there’s nothing to cure Geralt, but looking anyways. “Wait, you’ll be okay. Just hold on a second.”

“Jaskier, I didn’t kill them. All those people. I wouldn’t”

“Shh, shh, I know. I believe you” His memory provides him with the image of a younger Geralt, still shy and alone, but stronger than he knew how to control, kicking a bit too far during a soccer game and beaming the goalie in the face. The goalie’s nose had broken, and Geralt had been beside himself with grief. He’d sat by the goalie the whole time his nose had bled, helping with the ice pack and tissues, and asked to accompany him to the hospital. He’d refused to play soccer again, and no one wanted him on their team after that, anyways. Of course Geralt had never killed all those people. He couldn’t. “I’ll make sure everyone knows. I’ll tell everyone the truth.”

“You said it yourself—they won’t believe you.” Geralt says sadly.

“No, yes—yes they will. I’m very convincing. I promise.”

“Hmm, convincing. I could have used you, then. Before.”

“No duh,” says Jaskier, a short laugh cutting its way through his sobs. He leans forward, pressing his forehead to Geralt’s. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry that they did this to you, that they made everyone think you did those things.”

“Don’t be sorry.” Geralt’s voice is so thin that even right over top of him, Jaskier has to strain to hear it. “Make sure that it never happens again, to anyone else. Search for the truth. Make sure that the world doesn’t blame the easy target, the person who is quiet, or different. Protect them.”

“I will. It’s okay. I will.” Jaskier holds Geralt as his body convulses, and continues to hold him after it’s stopped. He cries over Geralt’s body until the red-tinted light stops coming in through the window, and the croaks of frogs begin to seep through the forest. Twilight falls, then night, and still Jaskier sits with Geralt. When the golden light of early sunrise starts to pour in through the holes in the eastern wall, Jaskier finally rises, legs asleep and stiff from sitting for so long. He takes Geralt’s sword into his hands carefully. He admires the impeccable state he’d kept it in, and the fine craftsmanship of the blade, but when Jaskier holds the sword tightly in towards his chest, it’s because that’s as close as he’ll get to embracing Geralt. The sword fits nicely in an empty loop of his harness, and that’s where it will stay.

Jaskier, fingers pinching a used match, stands and watches as the building burns. He feels a piece of himself burn with it, and when he walks away, he’s not entirely convinced that the majority of him won’t stay forever at this forlorn knot of the woods. His extensive collection of poisons and toxins he hides away somewhere safe—somewhere where they’ll never be able to hurt anyone again. He loses his harness, and all of the dark, movable clothing he’d worn as an assassin. He runs away, far enough that no one around him knows his name, and finds himself in a village so small he feels he’s gone back a hundred years. For a while, he lives off of wild berries and rabbits that he can catch, but he finds himself itching for more. In the dusty, sticky dregs of a bar, he finds it. He’s drunk enough to start singing, and, to his amazement, the crowd around him listens. They clap and stomp and sing along; they praise and cheer and offer to pay. Jaskier sings and sings and forgets how to shut up, and forgets why he was so sad for so long, but in the darker lyrics, and the minor chords, it never completely leaves him. Geralt never completely leaves him.

**Author's Note:**

> If I made you feel at least one (1) emotion, then my work here is done. 
> 
> I would be absolutely enamored to hear your thoughts. It doesn't matter if you're reading this two minutes after it was posted, or two years later--comments and kudos mean the absolute world to me <3
> 
> Thank you for reading! xx
> 
> Find me on Tumblr infinate-sky


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